Addis Ababa University 2024
part 2
Part 3
Job Vacancy Summary
- Hiring Authority: Addis Ababa University
- Department: Geography Department
- Organization Type: AAU University
- Employment Type: Full-time
- Position: Associate Professor or above
- Total Vacancy: 03
- Educational Qualification: PhD in relevant field.
- Experience: 10/ 15 years’ experience.
- Application Process: Offline
- Official Website: www.aau.edu.et
Samuel Kifle, Ph.D., President, Ethiopia’s Addis Ababa University
On August 31, 2023, Samuel Kifle (PhD) was appointed temporary president of Addis Ababa University (AAU). As the first autonomous university in Ethiopia, AAU was granted authorization by the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia’s (FDRE) Council of Ministers under Proclamation number 537/2015. Under this new setup, Dr. Samuel becomes the university’s first president.
Before taking on the role of AAU president, Dr. Samuel served as the State Minister for Higher Education and Development for almost five years. One of the most important individuals in guiding Ethiopian universities through processes of organizational, curricular, policy, and managerial transformation was the president. By default, Dr. Samuel was one of the important figures in the evaluation and suggestions made by AAU to become the country’s first officially recognized public university.
From November 2018 until September 2021, Dr. Samuel served as the State Minister for Science and Higher Education, assuming additional responsibilities in higher education administration. It was during the early stages of Ethiopia’s political reform that called for reconsidering and analyzing the country’s education policy and planning for higher education institutions’ future in terms of educational philosophy, policy, structure, pedagogy, organization, and management. Throughout the management of the intended national educational reform, he showed a better degree of leadership competence, analytical aptitude, and transformational ability.
The majority of the president’s professional career was devoted to leadership roles in higher education. More precisely, he made significant contributions to initiatives about quality, access, growth, and reform in higher education. For example, from July 2015 to October 2016, Dr. Samuel served as the program’s general manager for the Higher Education Expansion Programme (MoE).
Actually, since he was appointed General Director for Higher Education Administration Affairs in 2013, Dr. Samuel Kifle has been in charge of higher education leadership throughout the country. In addition to his special abilities of strategic planning, managing, coordinating, and mobilizing people and material resources for better and more realistic outputs, he displayed visionary, transformative, and strategic powers in all these roles.
Academically, the president graduated in October 2010 from Andhra University in India with a PhD in Commerce and Management Studies. He graduated from Addis Abeba University in 2001 with a BA in accounting and an MSc in accounting and finance in 2006. It provides him strength in the essential competencies of his present role as a finance and accounting expert, namely in budget and financial management and fund-raising techniques.
In addition, Dr. Samuel received prizes in his field of competence and research interests, as well as foreign scholarships and fellowships. On January 10, 2014, this scholar was also given the “Best PhD Thesis Medal Award of Hindu.” In 2012 and 2013, the president visited the International University College in Leuven, Belgium, as a visiting professor.
He participated in various foreign research and training partnerships in 2006 and 2007, including Fulbright Senior Scholarship programs, the University of Hull in the United Kingdom, and the Centre for Foreign Co-operation of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. The university president could bring to his present position comparable experiences in worldwide intellectual networking and cooperation.
Dr. Samuel’s abilities extend beyond leadership roles; before taking on his current roles, he taught in a variety of capacities at Jimma University in Ethiopia. From November 2010 until August 2012, he worked as an assistant professor at the College of Business and Economics. His previous position as a Lecturer in the Department of Accounting and Finance (March 2004 to July 2007) was continued with this experience. In the same field, he worked as an assistant lecturer from October 20002 until March 2004.
This means that the researcher is aware of the real obstacles that graduate and undergraduate students face in the classroom. Presidents who are successful need to be well-versed in the field of education. To fully comprehend the commercial side of the organization, one needs to expertise and training in education.
As part of his community service and in response to requests for his assistance, the president often went above and beyond the institutions for which he worked. He is an insider at the institution since, for example, he served on the College of Business and Economics (AAU) graduate program’s external examiners. At various points in time, he also held management board positions at Police University College, Semara University, and Mizan Tepi University.
In addition, Dr. Samuel served as a board member for Oromia International Bank and an alternate member of the Partnership for Applied Science and Technology (PASET), Africa steering committee. The president of most of these organizations is often praised for his honesty, cooperation, and dedication, particularly in institutional change or crisis management.